Conventionally, a camera has generally incorporated an auxiliary lighting device, so that a good captured image can be obtained by employing the auxiliary lighting device for the image capturing operation, even when the image is captured in a dark environment or under a backlight condition.
A light irradiating section of the auxiliary lighting device incorporated in the camera is constituted by a light emitting member formed in substantially a cylindrical shape, such as a Xenon tube, etc., and a reflector on which light emitted from the light emitting member are reflected toward the subject. Further, the reflector is constituted by a circumferential wall section formed around the cylinder axis of the light emitting member and two sidewall sections, which intersect the cylinder axis of the light emitting member and oppose to each other. In the conventional auxiliary lighting device for general purpose, cross sectional shapes of the reflector, being orthogonal to the axis direction of the Xenon tube, have been the same at any positions on the axis direction of the Xenon tube, and the angle of one of the two sidewall sections versus the surface orthogonal to the Xenon tube has been the same as that of another one of the two sidewall sections.
Departing from such the light irradiating section in the conventional auxiliary lighting device for general purpose as mentioned in the above, for instance, Patent Document 1 sets forth an auxiliary lighting device, in which the shape of the reflector is formed in such a manner that at least a cross sectional shape of the reflector at a specific position, being orthogonal to the axis direction of the Xenon tube, is different from those at any positions other than the specific position, or the cross sectional shape of the reflector continuously changes along the axis direction of the Xenon tube, or the cross sectional shape of the reflector is established as a series of discontinuous shapes in the axis direction of the Xenon tube.
[Patent Document 1]                Tokkaihei 11-102004, (Japanese Non-Examined Patent Publication)        
When incorporating the light irradiating section of the auxiliary lighting device in conventional cameras, although the auxiliary lighting device is disposed just above the optical axis of the photographic lens in a state of the horizontal position photography in some conventional cameras, the auxiliary lighting device is generally disposed at such a position that is apart from the optical axis of the photographic lens by shifting it toward an inclined upper-left direction or toward an inclined upper-right direction from the optical axis in most of the conventional cameras.
On the other hand, the photographic lens, to be incorporated in an electric camera in which analogue signals, acquired by photo-electronically converting the captured image of the subject, is further converted into digital image data, and then, predetermined image-processing operations are applied to the digital image data, so as to store the processed digital image data into the recording medium, is generally capable of conducting a close-up photography to such an extent that some electric camera can capture an image of the subject close to the front surface of the lens at a position separating from the subject only by several centimeters.
However, when the camera approaches the subject such the extent as mentioned in the above, there has been a problem that, due to the positional deviation between the light irradiating section of the aforementioned auxiliary lighting device and the optical axis of the photographic lens, an amount of light irradiated onto one side potion of the subject, to which the auxiliary lighting device does not oppose directly, becomes short, resulting in unevenness of exposure amount on the captured image.
Further, in recent years, well known is the bended optical system in which the optical axis is bended in a direction substantially parallel to the front surface of the camera by disposing reflecting member within the photographic lens. In the camera equipped with the abovementioned photographic lens, since the front surface of the lens is substantially equivalent to the front surface of the camera, the aforementioned problem of the unevenness of exposure amount when conducting the close-up photography is getting into more serious situation.
The light irradiating section of the auxiliary lighting device described in the aforementioned Patent Document 1 relates to the shape of the reflector when employing such a camera design concept that the aperture section of the reflector, normally shaped in a rectangular, is not protruded outside from the camera. Accordingly, the irradiating section described in the aforementioned Patent Document 1 cannot be a countermeasure for solving the problem of the unevenness of exposure amount.